"Worst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hearing the approach of other riders—a man and a woman. And the woman's horse was beyond control. It was a little, fiery Arab, leaping high in the air at each stride, and timing a nasty forward jerk of the head at the worst moment for ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... what feeble foresight! What principle of political economy is better established than that a monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch of industry can be cursed. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... her hands, and exclaimed in an agony, "O tell me, where is she? What has become of her? Is she sick? Dead? Is she in her chamber? O let me go thither and know the worst!" ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... worst in the row, for it is the cheapest—the tyrant "Drink" will not let his slave afford a better. The front door opens opposite the high dead wall of another block of houses, so that very little daylight comes in at the sunniest of times—no loss, perhaps, as the sunshine would only make ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... to tempt a rush. It was all a plot, fellows, to coax us away for a short time. And the worst of it is the game worked only too well. I'll never get over that loss, never! I ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... after, was exceedingly misty. Now, though he was well acquainted with the place, he lost his way, and walked backwards and forwards for many a long hour. At last he got into a low rushy spot, where he saw before him many circular rings. He at once recalled the place, and began to fear the worst. He had heard, many hundreds of times, of the bitter experiences in those rings of many a shepherd who had happened to chance on the dancing-place or the circles of the Fair Family. He hastened away as ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... sufficient. There is implied in all this an utterly false major premiss: viz. That Scriptural quotations found in the writings of Origen, of Tertullian, of Jerome, must needs be the ipsissima verba of the SPIRIT. Whereas it is notorious "that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years after it was composed: that Irenaeus and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... disliked anything?' said Lucy. 'Oh! I know what it was. I do not like going to a large town, where we can only walk in the streets, and go out shopping every day, and the boys have nothing to amuse them. And it is worst of all to go to a place where Papa and Mamma have been before, and know all the people; we go out to tea half the days we are there, or to dinner, or have company at home, and I never get a quiet evening's reading with Papa, and Allan has a very ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... terribly that my heart will never be quite at peace so long as I can remember that dreadful time!—Do you know why she left me? Simply to prove to me what is not true—that she is base. But the worst of it is, she did not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove by her departure! She went away in response to some inner prompting to do something disgraceful, in order that she might say to herself—'There—you've done ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... conspicuous platforms, and a continual sound of drums, cymbals and shrill trumpets called the attention of the crowd to some "Wonderful Exhibition"—some infant phenomenon, giant, or three-headed pig. A great part of the crowd belonged evidently to the very worst part of society, but the watchfulness of the police prevented any open disorder. We came away early and in a quarter of an hour were in busy London, leaving far behind us the revel and debauch, which was prolonged through the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... prove a pretty good claim. I could have made my profit. But for these canting hypocrites, the lad and his mother, I could get this fiery gentleman as comfortably into my net as our old friend—our mutual friend, ha! ha!—and chubby, rosy Nell. At the worst, it's a golden opportunity, not to be lost. Let us find them first, and I'll find means of draining you of some of your superfluous cash, sir, while there are prison bars, and bolts, and locks, to keep your friend or kinsman safely. I hate your virtuous ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... banquet was held. The chroniclers say of it that there were speeches, embraces, and a fresh resolution to fight, and endure the worst or conquer. And they chose a battle-cry—Christ and Holy Church. At separating, the Emperor, with infinite tenderness, but never more knightly, prayed forgiveness of any he might have wronged or affronted; and the guests came one by one to bid him adieu, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... were wet they must dry out by the heat of their bodies. There was no possibility of getting at their kit bags, it was so crowded. No man was allowed to open one. All they had was the little they carried in their packs. How they lived through it was a wonder, but live they did. Perhaps the worst torture of all was the great round cork life preserver in the form of a cushioned ring which they were obliged to wear night and day. A man could never lie down comfortably with it on, and if from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep he awoke with his back aching tortures. The meat and cabbage was ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... consciences of the more advanced Protestants. The natural progress of opinion abruptly ceased, and the moderate thinkers who had pressed for a change in ritual which would have satisfied the zeal of the reformers withdrew from union with a party which revived the worst pretensions of ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... to say whether despotic power exerts its worst and most direful influences on those who wield it, or on those who have it to bear; on its masters, ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ever, and singing merrily in the front yard, when the boys came home at noon. The moment she saw them she felt perfectly forlorn, and it suddenly seemed to her as if she couldn't live any longer without Milly. That wasn't the worst of it; she knew she couldn't live any ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... belated by the storm. It was midnight when they arrived at Bill's house. They found Curly with bridle hanging, standing in the snow beside the barn. Mrs. Smith was distracted. Bill and Jim, though worried, did not fear the worst. But with lanterns they set out upon the tracks Curly had left in the snow. Bill's wife would not ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... understatement, Latham thought wretchedly. But this was one of the worst ones, even worse than the time on Callisto. Thinking about ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... truth," said Little John to himself, "I will be the worst servant to him that ever ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... structure and artificial polish of contemporaneous French literature, while it was not without some good influence on English prose, was less beneficial to poetry, and its worst effect was on the drama, which soon ceased to be pictures of human beings in action and became only descriptive of such pictures. In this walk as in others Dryden was the literary chief, and of his plays it can truly be said that the serious ones contain many striking and poetical pieces ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... who was not overyoung, but had the foulest and worst-favoured visnomy was ever seen; for she had a nose flattened sore, a mouth all awry, thick lips and great ill-set teeth; moreover, she inclined to squint, nor was ever without sore eyes, and had a green and yellow ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Alas, all those who do not understand me, or who choose to misunderstand me, those are the worst!—especially the ill-natured people, the classical people who bray about music, stride straight to the notes, and have no patience till they come to Beethoven; who foolishly prate and fume about my unclassical management, but at bottom only wish to ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... by the young bees, hatching. These empty cells, without honey to fill them, appear to be a source of much uneasiness. Although such hive and caps may be well stored, I have ever found them to be the worst in the apiary, much more disposed to plunder, than weaker ones with half the honey. As weak stocks cannot be bettered now, it is best to remove them at once, and put the temptation out of the way. Carelessness is but a sorry excuse, for letting bees establish this habit ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... know how you got on to that treatment, Dr. Bird," he said, "but it is doing the men good. The worst cases haven't been affected much, one way or the other, but the progress of the malady in the mild cases from the stables has been completely checked. I think they have ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... evading the eye of authority, nor was I a little pleased to have escaped myself, when a single rap at the oak, not unlike the hard determined thump of an inflexible dun, in one moment revived all our worst apprehensions, and, unfortunately, with too much reason for the alarm. The proctors had marked poor Tom, and traced him out, and this visit was from one of their bull-dogs, bringing a summons for Echo to attend ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... evening sky is a mockery of sorrow; his own soul and its sadness is a mockery of himself. There is nothing in the sadness, nothing in the mockery. To tell him as comfort, that in his own thought lives the meaning if nowhere else, is mockery worst of all; for if there be no truth in them, if these things be no embodiment, to make them serve as such is to put a candle in a death's-head to light the dying through the place of tombs. To his former foolish fancy a primrose might preach a childlike trust; the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... blind people wandered from village to village in groups of two to twenty. Quite a number of the moderately insane would go about begging, too, but the worst were chained to trees or put in stocks and their food thrown at them. Even the dumb brutes were not so poorly ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of a uniform black color; when nearly cool add Venice turpentine, two ounces; Armenian bole, one ounce; oil of bergamot, one drachm; rub up the bole with a little olive oil before putting it in. Apply several times daily by putting it upon lint or linen. It heals the worst cases in ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... That home to whose porch came in time the Black Horses, in time just to save from the last worst dishonour, but not save from years racked by each pang that can harrow man's dignity in each daily assault on the fort of man's pride; the sly treacherous daughter—her terrible marriage—the man whose disgrace ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... intuition did. And I have learned by experience to respect those intuitions. Out of a whole dining-room full that man had been the only one who had attracted my attention, and I felt antagonistic toward him instantly. I had the same feeling when I saw him behind us on the road to Napoleon. And the worst part of it was that he had done absolutely nothing to make me feel that way toward him. He hadn't been impertinent, in fact, he had never said a single word to any of us! All he had done was to stare searchingly at Nyoda through that goggle ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... rebellion. That was, however, before the tyranny of Charles had driven him into exile with his patron, and before James had attempted the subversion of all constitutional government. To deny the right of revolution was to justify the worst demands of James, and it is in its favor that he exerts his ablest controversial power. "The true remedy," he says, "of force without authority is to oppose force to it." Let the sovereign but step outside the powers derived from the social ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... where, he regrets to say, he shuddered at the thought of how much human slaughtering it had been the scene—all done for holy causes. Let an impious world forgive those Little Ones who in all ages have lent their aid to stimulate the worst passions! ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... that moment she looked alarmingly like her sister; there was something about Fanny in her corner, calculated, when all circumstances were taken into consideration, to make one's blood chill, but Andrew did not look at her. He was intent upon Ellen, and the facing of the worst agony of his life, and Ellen was intent upon him. She loved her mother, but the fear as to her father's suffering moved her more than her mother's. She was more like her father, and could better estimate his pain under stress. Andrew rose to his feet and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Of the original building little now remains but the plan and two doorways, the chancel having been rebuilt and the porch added in the sixteenth, and the whole interior beplastered and bepainted in the worst possible style in the seventeenth, century. Of the two doors the western has been very like that at Villar. It has only two orders left, of which the outer, though under a deep arch, has a billet-moulded drip-mould, and its voussoirs each carved with a figure on the outer and ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... the worst part of it all," she answered with a stifled sob—"yes, I love him." She lifted herself higher on the cushions and put her beautiful arms above her head, her eyes looking into space as if she was trying to solve the problem of what her present resolve ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... merits and significance from the public organs which reflect with more or less precision and exactitude the opinions of the great community of nations on the other side the Atlantic. Party feeling, unless it be of a very enlightened, patriotic, and unselfish kind, is apt to breed the worst types of mental perversity, and give birth to paradoxes of the most startling character. And when a great national document, discussing matters vital to the well-being, prosperity and political advancement of the republic is declared by one influential paper ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... will find that more men will be needed to keep the South in subjection to the arbitrary projects of the Administration than are required to drive the armies of rebellion from the field. The peace you are promised is no peace, but is a condition which will perpetuate and make enduring all the worst features ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You're forgetting a connecting link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed by Moseley to himself on ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Hans Donnerspiel the usurpation was not complete; he still knew enough to go in when it rained, but he did not know enough to stay there after the storm had blown over. Hans was known to a large circle of friends and admirers as about the worst miller in those parts; but as he was the only one, people who quarrelled with an exclusively meat diet continued to patronize him. He was honest, as all stupid people are; but he was careless. So absent-minded was he, that sometimes when grinding somebody's wheat he would thoughtlessly turn ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... address which Justice Chase delivered on the 2d of May to a Baltimore grand jury, assailing the repeal of the Judiciary Act and universal suffrage and predicting the deterioration of "our republican Constitution... into a mobocracy, the worst of all possible governments." * Considering the fact that the President was still smarting from the Chief Justice's lash and also that Chase himself was more heartily detested by the Republicans than any other member of the Supreme Bench, nothing could have been more untimely than ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... worst of it. You make no complaints, I think, because you do not wish to be cured of them. You prefer nursing your supposed cause of grief, with a sort of solitary pleasure—the gratification of a haughty spirit, that is too proud to seek for solace, and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... a collection of Indian anecdotes and speeches, the worst compiled and arranged book possible, yet not without clews of some value. All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, though I was afterwards compelled to give up this project, they aided me in judging of what I subsequently ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... army over these almost boundless plains. This duty he so performed as to receive the highest commendation of General Kearney. And his dignified character was such as to win the confidence and respect of every man in the army. The worst of men can often appreciate high ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the coast is called a tornado, visited them this afternoon, and confined them to the "worst hut's worse room" till it had subsided, and the weather become finer. At three p.m. they sallied forth, and were presently saluted by hootings, groanings, and hallooings from a multitude of people of all ages, from a child to its grandmother, and they followed closely at ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... luxury in waking in a large room, with a maid pulling up the blinds, and reporting that the day promised to be grand. The maid could be looked upon as a friend, in that she knew the best and the worst concerning Miss Higham's clothes, and inquiries were put to her concerning breakfast; the answer came that this meal was ready at half-past eight; you went down at any time you pleased between this and ten o'clock. Mr. Henry breakfasted early; her ladyship ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... of pages of the most unnatural theoretical discussions. Besides, the author is in such a hurry that he seems never to have had the time himself to read over his novels before sending them to the printer. And, worst of all, every one of the heroes of Dostoevski, especially in his novels of the later period, is a person suffering from some psychical disease or from moral perversion. As a result, while one may read some of the novels of Dostoevski with the greatest ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... possibly in some cases an accidental drop discharged by the animal itself has caused the loss of sight. When coming to close quarters with a skunk, by covering up the face, one's clothes only are ruined. But this is not all one has to fear from an encounter; the worst is that effluvium, after which crushed garlic is lavender, which tortures the olfactory nerves, and appears to pervade the whole system like a pestilent ether, nauseating one until sea-sickness seems almost a pleasant ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... after the perusal of the anonymous letter, one would have imagined that the image which met his gaze, from time to time, in the looking-glass, was that of his worst and deadliest enemy, so fierce and menacing were the glances which he cast on it as he paced the floor. At length he took up the document, and, having read ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... not in his nature to be obedient. 'I know if I was chief, I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.' Decidedly, he was not afraid to be 'what club men call insubordinate, though, of all insubordinates, the club men are the worst'. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so popular among his fellows and such a cypher in his home. At an early date in his married life his position had been ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... with Rakitin? No, not as much as that. Is it likely—a pig like that? He considers I am ... a blackguard. They can't understand a joke either, that's the worst of such people. They never understand a joke, and their souls are dry, dry and flat; they remind me of prison walls when I was first brought here. But he is a clever fellow, very clever. Well, Alexey, it's all over with ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her the bad first. Do her that honor. She has earned it. She'll bear the worst like the heroine she is—the heroine and patriot. She's ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... have told of the two bird families and how they died is true. Worst of all it is that theirs is a tragedy repeated in reality thousands and thousands of times every year; yet the beautiful woman I tried to describe at the beginning of this account wears birds and their wings on her hat. It is because she ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... numbered seat each pasteboard fits And smooths its caudal plumage as it sits; Waits while the slow musicians saunter in, Till the bald leader taps his violin; Till the old overture we know so well, Zampa or Magic Flute or William Tell, Has done its worst-then hark! the tinkling bell! The crash is o'er—the crinkling curtain furled, And to! the glories ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "That's just the worst of it," said Eleanor. "And it's in making them see that there's still hope and cheer and good friendship in the world that we can help them most. I do think we can be of some practical use to them, too, but the main thing is to brace them up, and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... we should give up our original citizenship and get nothing in return, and become subject to disabilities. Members had the calm assurance to state, without any grounds whatever, that the signatures were forgeries; and, worst of all, one member in an inflammatory speech challenged us openly to fight for our rights, and his sentiment seemed to meet with considerable approval. This is the disappointing result of our honest endeavours to bring about a fusion between the people of this State, and ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... lady, "are among a farmer's worst enemies. They steal and destroy and menace all the year round, but for all that there are many farmers who will not shoot or trap them. And these, you will notice, are always farmers of a ripe age and sense shaped by experience. They know, you may be sure. My stepsister's first ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... into the wood, and told those who were ordered to attend him to wait outside. He had not far to seek, the unicorn soon came out and sprang at him, as if he would make an end of him without delay. "Softly, softly," said he, "most haste, worst speed," and remained standing until the animal came quite near, then he slipped quietly behind a tree. The unicorn ran with all his might against the tree and stuck his horn so deep into the trunk that he could not get it out again, and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the latter days of the Republic, when Marius, in the interests of efficiency, had made military service a profession. But it was aggravated under the successors of Diocletian, as the barbarian element in the armies increased and the Roman element diminished. Its worst effects appeared in the years 406-407. The German inroads upon Italy and Gaul were then followed by the proclamation of military usurpers in Britain and on the Rhine; the Roman West was divided by civil war at the very moment ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... what he found most significant in the common English character. With the exceptions of Sir Toby Belch and Justice Shallow, the Bastard is the most English figure in the plays. He is the Englishman neither at his best nor at his worst, but at his commonest. The Englishman was never so seen before, nor since. An entirely honest, robust, hearty person, contemptuous of the weak, glad to be a king's bastard, making friends with women (his own mother one of them) with a trusty, good-humoured ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... practices among students in all the classes at that period, but they were exceptional, so far as my knowledge of them extended, and would have required a system of espionage to detect them, or informers from the guilty ones themselves. Dartmouth however, at its worst, in that period, was not one whit behind any other college in New England, in its general tone of morals, in observance of law, in habits of study and in scholarly attainments. There were not a few whose sense of honor ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... corrupt. So they have lost God and fallen into endless differences, disputes, violence, and darkness about insignificant things. They have divided religion between this creed and teacher and that. The corruption of the best is the worst, said Aristotle; and the great religions of the world, and especially this Christianity of ours, are the ones most darkened and divided and wasted by the fussings and false exactitudes of the creed-monger and the sectary. There is no lie so bad as a stale disfigured truth. There ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... becoming a familiar figure both in Tamsui and in the surrounding country. By many he was loved, by all he was respected, but by a large number he was bitterly hated. The scholars continued his worst enemies. They could never forgive him for beating them so completely in argument, in the days when A Hoa was striving for the light, and their hatred increased as they saw other scholars becoming Christians under his teaching. There was something about him, however, that compelled ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... is a burn, whether made purposely with a branding iron or by accident in any other way. The scorched flesh puckers and smarts. It hurts every time a leg is moved. It seems as if a thousand needles were playing a tattoo on the exposed surface. Neither is this the worst of the business. To a high-strung animal the roping, throwing, and burning is a tremendous nervous shock. For days after branding a horse will jump and start, quivering with expectant agony, at the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... summer silk gown, with a wrap and a bonnet and an umbrella at hand. Mrs. Anderson was not afraid of a thunder-shower in the ordinary sense, but her imagination never failed her. Therefore she was always dressed, in case the worst should happen and she be forced to flee from a stricken house. She also had her small and portable treasures ready at hand. Then she sat down in the middle of the sitting-room well out of range of the chimney, and prayed for her own ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was urging that the Genevan version should supplant these others, or whether he was calling for a new translation. Indeed, we are not sure that he even mentioned the Genevan version. But James spoke up to say that he had never yet seen a Bible well translated into English; but the worst of all he thought the Genevan to be. He spoke as though he had just had a copy given him by an English lady, and had already noted what he called its errors. That was at the very least a royal evasion, for if there was any Book he did ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... successive miles, through woods. The habitations that are seen from it are but few, and these of the poorest description. The woods chiefly consist of black oak, pine, and cedar-trees, which only grow on land of the worst quality. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... to work in opposition to the action of the child, but in other cases work constructively; I mean provide the child with material to construct his own personality and then let him do this work of construction. This is, in brief, the art of education. The worst of all educational methods are threats. The only effective admonitions are short and infrequent ones. The greatest skill in the educator is to be silent for the moment and then so reprove the fault, indirectly, that the child is brought ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... fate-ordained bale, Had smitten with the hate of cakes and ale, A soda-water, syphon-squirting crew, Guilty of treason to the revenue: Their lurid language and their unctuous warnings, Their moral-pointings and their tale-adornings, And, worst of all, their shameful waste of ink In signing pledges to abstain from drink, Proved them a witless and a churlish band, Unfit to dwell ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... to M. Bouill, had its answer dated before it was written. If any have been found, others will be added, to serve any evil purposes. Still, however, I hope the king and his family will be saved. I cannot but believe it, from all I can put together. If the worst of the jacobins hear that Fox has called him an "unfortunate monarch,"- -that Sheridan has said "his execution would be an act of injustice,"—and Grey, "that we ought to have spared that one blast to their glories by ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... with alternate consonants and vowels (which must give a pronounceable word), dealing with difficulties under the other rules as they might arise. Meanwhile Aitchkin, after the manner of an obstructionist official of the worst type, sat over me with the rules, condemning my results. Even "Telegrams: HAHAHAHAHA London," merely caused ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... Italian church for any purpose but to say your prayers or look at the ladies, you rank yourself among the trooping barbarians I just spoke of; you treat the place as an orifice in the peep- show. Still, it is almost a spiritual function—or, at the worst, an amorous one—to feed one's eyes on the molten colour that drops from the hollow vaults and thickens the air with its richness. It is all so quiet and sad and faded and yet all so brilliant and living. The strange figures in the mosaic pictures, bending ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... action was sure to occur. The characteristics of parts of the American coast prevented close blockade, especially in winter; and the same violent winds which forced an enemy's ships off, facilitated egress under circumstances favoring evasion. Escape to the illimitable ocean then depended at worst upon speed. This was the case at Boston, which Commodore Bainbridge before the war predicted could not be effectually blockaded; also at Narragansett, recommended for the same reason by Commodore John Rodgers; ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... since the physician spoke these words, and to doubt longer would be to gaze upon the sun and to question its brightness. Mayhew has told the father his worst fears, and bids him prepare like a Christian and a man for the loss of his earthly treasure. It was he who watched the decay of her mother. The case is a similar one. He has no consolation to offer. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... long, or the elbow incline inwards, it will be proper to make him turn the palm of his hand downwards, so as to make it perfectly horizontal. This will infallibly incline the elbow outwards, and prevent the worst position the arm can possibly fall into, which is that of inclining the elbow to the body. This position of the hand so necessarily keeps the elbow out, that it would not be improper to make the pupil sometimes practice it, though he may have no defect in his make; as an occasional ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... her town. For on the point of dress the artistic Hollanders, as soon as they discard their quaint old national costume, are probably the most tasteless people in the world, and of these the women of a North Dutch provincial town are probably even the very worst dressed. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... any case, a man of his years should have been thinking of higher things than mere gauds and trinkets. A like criticism applied to Mrs. Coppin's demand for a silk petticoat, which struck Roland as simply indecent. Frank and Percy took theirs mostly in specie. It was Muriel who struck the worst blow by insisting on ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... our own best friends or we can be our own worst enemies. In the degree that we become friends to the highest and best within us, we become friends to all; and in the degree that we become enemies to the highest and best within us, do we become enemies to all. In the degree that ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Kaiser could get punished in America without going to the trouble and expense of arresting him first, Abe. There is a whole lot of experiences which the American people pays to go through just once, y'understand, which if the Kaiser could be persuaded to take them all on, one after the other, Abe, his worst enemies would got to pity him. Supposing, for instance, he would start off with one of them electric vibrating face massages, Abe, and if he comes through it alive, y'understand, he would then be hustled off to one of these here strong-arm bunkopathic ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche. At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in flood-time, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... when they begin firing, don't get into a crowd where there are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always try to get close together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier to be with others, but that's where it is worst of all! They always aim at a crowd. Now I used to keep farther away from the others and went alone, and I've never been wounded. Yet what things haven't I seen ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... for the compliment, Mistress Alice," said Chaloner; "but I think, if necessary, I could ruffle and swear with the best, or rather the worst of them. We passed for troopers very well ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... like boys. She could do most of the things they could, and they were, to her mind, a nuisance. They were always on hand, trying to help and to pretend that girls were weaker than they were in order to domineer over them. The worst of it was, Madge, Lillian and Eleanor might think the newcomers would add to the fun. So, though Phyllis did not mean to be rude either to Tom or to Jack, she was far from enthusiastic, and ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Trevor Battye saw the Samoyeds doing to the Brent geese on Kolguev Island. Thousands were driven into a kind of kraal, and killed for winter food. Next to the pelagic sealer, the whalers and ordinary seal-hunters are the worst scourges of the animal world. They killed off, for instance, every single one of the Antarctic right whales, and nearly all the Cape and Antarctic fur seals. But it is not generally known that they succeeded in almost killing off the black swans ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... The worst passions of Villani were now thoroughly awake, and he retorted with flashing eyes and a fierce tone, while his face even to his lips, turned ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... too much in New York to remind me. That's the worst of being happy in a place. When things go wrong you find there are too many ghosts about. I just couldn't stand it. I tried, but I couldn't. I'm going away to get cured—if I can. Mr. Faucitt is over in England, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... were saturated with the unction of religious fervour. Or, take the tradesman who may be a churchwarden or deacon at his church or chapel, but exhibits no scruples whatever in employing false weights, and, worst of all, in adulterating human food. An incalculable amount of this sort of thing goes on, and, whether it be accurate or not I cannot say, it is often ascribed to small dealers in small towns and villages, "pillars of the church," as a rule, which ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... taken account of, namely, in the sound produced by the explosion. Hence in the most careful experiments, where the vacuum was made as perfect as possible, and the explosion correspondingly the more violent, the results were actually the worst. With his explanations, the theory of the subject was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... go on forever—some day someone would speak just the right word and he would surprise them. He had come to listen with comparative equanimity to the statement that his hotel was badly managed, the service poor, and the food the worst served on the beach-front, but there was the very strong possibility that someone would inadvertently touch a sensitive nerve and he would "fly off the handle." When that happened, ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... changing his tone, 'I fancy that after all I'm your man for a little amateur investigation to-night. And, if I must speak the exact truth, I think that to sleep on this affair would be about the very worst thing we could do. But I was anxious to keep Nella out of harm's way at any rate till to-morrow. She is a very difficult creature to manage, Prince, and I may warn you,' he laughed grimly, 'that if we do succeed in doing anything to-night we shall catch it ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... him from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes. "I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen. Would you think ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the worst crime, for it can never be made good again. Of the old servants, I shall leave only Coucou with you. He is devoted to you and loves you enthusiastically. The brave Zouave will yearn for me, but console him by telling him I have gone for your good and tell yourself the same thing, should you feel ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... class are included burns of so severe a nature that destruction and death of the tissues follows; not only of the skin but of the flesh and bones in the worst cases. It is impossible to tell by the appearance of the skin what the extent of the destruction may be until the dead parts slough away after a week or ten days. The skin is of a uniform white color in some cases, or may be of a yellow, brown, gray, or black hue, and is comparatively ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... Oscar Winslowe's house, forty years ago. Winslowe was an unprincipled and dissolute man. He was only about twenty-five or six at that time, but already he was sodden with drink, drugs, and vice of every description. He was the worst kind of blackguard. But his wife was the exact opposite to him, a gentle, delicate girl. She was not beautiful, but her nature more than compensated for lack of beauty. He had married her for her money, and treated her abominably. I became friendly with her, partly because of the pity I felt for ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... black men are bad, for they are not. Many are entirely trustworthy, but the trustworthy ones are much, very much, in the minority. The vast majority are worthless—and a worthless nigger is the worst thing on earth." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Even at the worst estimate of Vere, I had imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor Phillida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few weeks. But the call of New York, of the "lounge ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... thyself worthy to be so." Raud exclaimed with all his might against the proposal, saying he would never believe in Christ, and making his scoff of God. Then the king was wroth, and said Raud should die the worst of deaths. And the king ordered him to be bound to a beam of wood, with his face uppermost, and a round pin of wood set between his teeth to force his mouth open. Then the king ordered an adder to be stuck into the mouth of him; but the serpent would not go into his mouth, but shrunk back ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the mind of the public is. We've hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken its ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper balance. Go, sir—you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own attempt, you ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... seated like cross-legged Turks on the raised platform at one end of the yurt, munching hardbread and drinking tea, while about twenty ugly, savage-looking men squatted in a circle around us and watched our motions. The settled Koraks of Penzhinsk Gulf are unquestionably the worst, ugliest, most brutal and degraded natives in all north-eastern Siberia. They do not number more than three or four hundred, and live in five different settlements along the seacoast; but they made us more trouble than all the other inhabitants of Siberia and Kamchatka together. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... for laughter, as well it might be, to the Indians and their king: Take the field? array their hosts against him? no, indeed; at worst they might match their women with his, if he still came on; for themselves such a victory would be a disgrace; a set of mad women, a general in a snood, a little old drunkard, a half- soldier, and a few naked dancers; why should they murder such a droll crew? However, when they ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... exceed its grasp. Also the accident of having a fine voice usually determines a singer's career, though a perfect vocal organ does not necessarily imply a musical nature. The best voices, in fact, often belong, by some contrariety of fate, to the worst musicians. For these and other reasons, there is less of the true spirit of music to be heard from vocal cords than from the cords and reeds and brazen tubes of piano, organ, string quartet, and orchestra. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... is but the heart's immortal thirst To be completely known and all forgiven, Even as sinful souls that enter Heaven: So take me, dear, and understand my worst, And freely pardon it, because confessed, And let me find ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... babe-butchering deed Lives not on history's blushing page alone; Our skies, it seems, have seen like victims bleed, And our own Ramahs echoed groan for groan; The fiends of France, whose cruelties decreed Those dexterous drownings in the Loire and Rhone, Were, at their worst, but copyists, second-hand, Of our shrined, sainted ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... north winds were whispering to him to be a chattel no longer. Often the eyes that looked away to where freedom lay were filled with a wistful longing that was tragic in its intensity, for they saw the hardships and the difficulties between the slave and his goal and, worst of all, an iniquitous law,—liberty's compromise with bondage, that rose like a stone wall between him and hope,—a law that degraded every free-thinking man to the level of a slave-catcher. There it loomed up before him, formidable, ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... people, 'Thou shalt not kill;' and afterwards, at another time, he told me to take a lot of my men, and go over there to that town just across, and kill all the men and boys I could find, and if they fought hard for their homes, and I seemed to be getting the worst of it for a little while, not to be afraid, he'd be with me, and he'd see that I came out all right. Oh, he's the gayest old god you ever saw to help ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... introduced and had known each other a long time. She was too familiar, and her levity jarred upon his more serious mood. So far as he could see, the girl had no screen future, though doubtless she was her own worst enemy. If someone had only taught her to be serious, her career might have been worth while. She had seemed not wholly negligible in the salmon-pink dancing frock, though of course the blonde curls ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... while, and they came dangerously near being struck by stones several times over, but escaped as if by a miracle. Then just as they were approaching one of the worst of the gaps, the cloud of smoke and ashes floated gradually away, they obtained a glimpse of the bright blue sky and were able to cross the crevice in safety, though conscious all the while that a great body of suffocating ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... actual angular measurements and found them correct.... But these long hours in the glare are very bad for the eyes; we have all suffered a good deal from snow-blindness of late, though we generally march with goggles, but Wilson gets the worst bouts, and I fear it is ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... a better child than usual. It was not until he happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst upon him: Eppie had run out by herself—had perhaps fallen into the Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling "Eppie!" and ran eagerly about the unenclosed space, exploring the dry cavities into which she might have fallen, and then gazing with questioning dread at the smooth red surface of the water. The cold drops ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... conceal the fact that he held his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of the army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he opened his doors to informers of the worst description; anybody who stood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemy to the emperor. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house-tax on Alexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Great in building the city; and he made the imperial government ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... enough, sir," struck in Abraham Lawson, who felt that Ben was getting the worst of the argument, and was moreover far less fluent than usual, probably from being deprived of the aid of the customary expletives, "but we're come to say this, sir, that the season's turned out very wet indeed. We've had a deal of broken time, and the men feel it very ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... Dinks," answered Kate, "I never was, even in her worst moments when we were becalmed; and I'm sure I couldn't be now, when she is sailing along so beautifully; but, what is that speck out there, captain, away to the right—is it a bird, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Apulia and Calabria are the provinces of Naples most celebrated for its production; the Apulian is the best. Sicily oil is of inferior quality; it is principally produced at Milazzo. Spanish oil is the worst. The foot deposited by olive oil is used for oiling machinery, under the name of' droppings ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only one of God's commandments, keep it rigidly ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... bullet-slitter, and would perhaps have rid me of Saint Francis without any trouble or risk on my part. Meantime, his non-appearance at this rendezvous has placed Master Francis Tyrrel, as he chooses to call himself, in the worst odour possible with the gentry at the Spring, who have denounced him as a coward and no gentleman.—What to think of the business myself, I know not; and I much want your assistance to see what can have become of this fellow, who, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... medical mission also exist in Bethnal Green, a densely populated part of London that in some portions can vie with the worst slums of the city. It was so necessary to provide better accommodations for nursing the sufferers than could be found in their poor homes that a warehouse was fitted up with beds and transformed into a small hospital. ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft |
